The present invention relates to wireless communication systems. In particular, the invention relates to database processing of information for user equipment (UE) handover.
User equipment (UE) in wireless communication systems are beginning to provide functionality for internet/public service telephone network (PSTN) access via multiple wireless systems (such as (WLANs), Bluetooth(copyright) a registered trademark for a wireless network, universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS), general packet radio service (GPRS), etc.). Hence, there is a growing need for these systems to work with each other in order for a UE to handover from one technology to another.
To assist in a handover, a wireless communication system base station can relay to a UE the information pertaining to outside systems. Thus, a base station needs to retain and constantly update information about the other systems. Retrieval of the information about another system is possible through secure inter-system connections (such as via an IP-cloud, for example) under roaming agreements. However, it is a deployment challenge to maintain and update such information about other systems. Hence there is a need for an alternate source to assist the base station in supplying the outside system information in order to eliminate the need for explicit inter-system connections and communications for this purpose.
The present invention employs a technique for obtaining and updating data relating to neighboring wireless systems.